The Arthur of the Low Countries

The Arthurian Legend in Dutch and Flemish Literature

Bart Besamusca, Frank Brandsma

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781786836823
• eBook ISBN: 9781786836847
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In the medieval Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands), Arthurian romance flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Middle Dutch poets translated French material (like Chrétien's Conte du Graal and the Prose Lancelot ), but also created romances of their own, like Walewein. This book provides a current overview of the Dutch Arthurian material and the research that it has provoked. Geographically, the region is a crossroads between the French and Germanic spheres of influence, and the movement of texts and manuscripts (west to east) reflects its position, as revealed by chapters on the historical context, the French material and the Germanic Arthuriana of the Rhinelands. Three chapters on the translations of French verse texts, the translations of French prose texts, and on the indigenous romances form the core of the book, augmented by chapters on the manuscripts, on Arthur in the chronicles, and on the post-medieval Arthurian material..

1

THE CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE LOW COUNTRIES

Bram Caers and Mike Kestemont

1. Prologue

The famous Manesse codex (Heidelberg, UB, Cod. Pal. germ. 848) features a series of full-page miniatures illustrating the monumental anthology of medieval lyrics that it contains.¹ On one of these (fol. 18r), we find a dramatic depiction of the Duke of Brabant, John I, who leads his troops into the Battle of Worringen (5 June 1288). The image shows a crucial episode in the history of the Low Countries when the duke decisively defeated the Archbishop of Cologne in the Limburg Succession War. Arguably the most striking pictorial element in this image is the conspicuous dragon helmet covering John’s head. Scholars have been quick to identify this as a reference to King Arthur’s legendary helmet with an engraved dragon. The helmet was famously introduced into Arthurian lore in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, with a playful allusion to the Celtic name of Arthur’s father – the ‘pen-dragon’ or head of dragons. This well-known illustration is but one of the many attestations of the cultural prominence of Arthurian literature in the medieval Low Countries, pervading all layers of society, especially the highest nobility, who sought to identify with the Celtic leader on many occasions.

It is not an exaggeration to state that the matière de Bretagne, as elsewhere in medieval Europe, was a defining characteristic of the Low Countries’ courtly culture during the high Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the Arthurian literary heritage extant from this part of Europe, and especially the specific historical context in which it arose, has not always received the international scholarly attention it deserves. In his acclaimed history of thirteenth-century vernacular Dutch literature, Frits van Oostrom, for instance, emphasised that the fact that the very first chivalric Grail romance was produced in the Low Countries merits a more prominent place in our collective cultural memory (Oostrom 2006, 218). At the very height of his fame, Chrétien de Troyes was asked by the Count of Flanders, Philip of Alsace, to write Perceval or the Conte du Graal, one of the most remarkable products of medieval Arthurian literature. Additionally, there are few places in the world where the medieval Grail legend is more alive than in Flanders, even today – in Bruges, for instance, the Procession of the Holy Blood has been held annually (with some exceptions) for over seven hundred years.²

To understand the unique contribution of the Low Countries to medieval Arthurian literature, it is crucial to gain insight into the complex political history of the region, taking account of its singular position on a linguistic and cultural crossroads. In the Middle Ages, the Low Countries consisted of an archipelago of local centres of political power, connected to each other through political alliances, marriages and intense cultural exchange. In the present contribution, we aim to introduce the reader to this complicated historical reality. At the core of our argument lies the observation that a defining feature of the Low Countries has been the region’s role as a mediator and link between different cultures and linguistic regions in Europe, most notably as an active interpreter between the Romance and Germanic spheres.

2. Geography and Politics

The term ‘Low Countries’ (Du.: ‘Lage Landen’ – Fr.: ‘Pays-Bas’ – Ger.: ‘Niederlände’) is nowadays taken to roughly correspond to the territories of Belgium and The Netherlands – sometimes including the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – seen from a historical perspective. In English, the term was coined only fairly recently, to distinguish the ‘Low Countries’ from ‘The Netherlands’, which only refers to a single country. The plural in ‘Netherlands’, however, already shows that the term covers a diverse set of regions. Indeed, the Low Countries never constituted a unified political entity in the Middle Ages so that the term is somewhat anachronistic. Only from the sixteenth century onwards, in the wake of political and ideological unification, did the usage of the singular noun ‘Nederland’ become widely accepted, after a period in which singular and plural were used interchangeably.³ Throughout the medieval period, however, the Low Countries never constituted an individual kingdom in its own right, such as the neighbouring states of England or France, as they were mostly part of either France or the German Empire.⁴ In fact, the area now known as the Low Countries in late medieval times was divided by the northernmost border between France and the Empire, with the eastern area answering to the Holy Roman Emperor, and the county of Flanders to the west, (mostly) answering to the King of France.⁵

Where then, does this idea of a ‘Low Countries’ come from? The origin of the Low Countries as an imagined territory between the Kingdom of France and the German Empire has its roots in the well-known division of the empire of Charlemagne among his grandsons in the treaty of Verdun in 843. Upon the death of Charlemagne’s heir Louis the Pious, the vast Frankish empire was divided into three roughly equal parts, each ruled by one grandson. The eldest, Lothar I, inherited what has been called ‘Middle Francia’, extending from the estuary of the great rivers in the north (Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine), to that of the Rhône in the south, including the north of the Italian peninsula, linking the North Sea coast to the Mediterranean.

Further divisions among subsequent heirs, in 855 (Treaty of Prüm), in 870 (Treaty of Meerssen), and in the course of the tenth century, gave rise to the Duchy of Lower Lotharingia, a territory which in theory included the entire Low Countries east of the river Scheldt. At this point in time, the Low Countries were settling into the basic layout that would remain essentially unchanged for over five centuries: a loose collection of regions in the estuary of the rivers Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine, answering mostly to the Holy Roman Empire, and partly (only the county of Flanders, and only for part of its territory) to the King of France. However, the idea that most of these territories at some point in time formed part of one powerful and supra-regional duchy, such as Lotharingia, would continue to feed the imagination of princes and chroniclers for centuries.⁶ As will become apparent below, this early medieval history of the Low Countries also partly explains the differences in appeal of Charlemagne and Arthurian literature throughout the Low Countries.⁷

The Low Countries we speak of today is, however, an imagined territory that differs from the historical layout of Lower Lotharingia. For one, it does not stretch as far south as the old Duchy and neither does it include the County of Flanders which, historically speaking, did not always form part of Lower Lotharingia, answering instead to the French crown. To find the reason for this geographical shift, we have to move our focus from the early to the late Middle Ages. In 1384, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and brother to the King of France, married Margaret, daughter of Louis of Male and sole heiress to the County of Flanders. In less than a century, four generations of Burgundian dukes were to succeed in acquiring most of the Low Countries through marriage, inheritance, conquest or purchase. While the importance of their northern territories did not cease to grow, the dukes continued to rule over their home territories in Burgundy, in present-day eastern France. It was mainly Charles the Bold (ruled 1467–77) who actively sought to establish a land corridor between the northern territories and Burgundy, thereby effectively striving to restore the old Duchy of Lower Lotharingia, which used to cover exactly these regions (Vaughan 1973, 100–7). In 1473, when he entered into negotiations with the Holy Roman Emperor to acquire a royal title for himself, it was also the old Duchy that formed the basis of his claims to royalty (Vaughan 1973, 151–2). Negotiations failed, however, and when Charles died in 1477, the incapacity of his young daughter and heiress Mary to defend the Burgundian territories against French invasions meant the definitive end of the ambition to unite the northern and southern regions of the Burgundian territories. Through inheritance, the northern territories passed into the Habsburg line, to Philip the Fair and then to Charles V, who decided in 1549 to formally unite them so that they would never be divided by questions of succession. This decision has been of vital influence to the perception of the ‘Low Countries’ as a cultural and political unity of sorts, even if it was to be rather short-lived in the context of the Eighty Years’ War. From the 1570s onwards, north and south definitively went their own ways, only to be united for a short time between 1815 and 1830.⁸

For the topic under discussion here, the crucial time period lies between the two formative periods of the Low Countries, as both a geographical and cultural unity, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. During this time, the region was divided by two important frontiers, one political, the other linguistic. As mentioned, generally speaking the river Scheldt divided the Low Countries into a western part (the greater part of the County of Flanders) answering to the King of France, and an eastern part (with all the other territories) falling under imperial authority. The eastern group included, in alphabetical order, the following main entities: Brabant, Frisia, Guelders, Gulik, Hainaut, Holland/Zeeland, Liège, Limburg, Loon, Luxembourg, Namur and Utrecht. Included among these regions was ‘Rijks-Vlaanderen’ (‘Imperial Flanders’), the part of the County of Flanders on the east bank of the river Scheldt, for which the Count of Flanders answered to imperial authority.⁹

This schematic overview requires at least two qualifications. One is that in the midst of the bigger players, certain smaller feudal domains of lesser political and historical significance succeeded in retaining relative independence for centuries. A good example is the city of Mechelen (Fr.: Malines), a separate seigneurial entity that constituted an enclave within the Duchy of Brabant. The second observation is that the various separate territories shifted their political allegiances according to military conflicts or matters of inheritance and succession. This is the case for the County of Hainaut, united subsequently with Flanders and Holland, but these shifts were also very important in the east of the region, for Guelders and Gulik, as well as in the territories surrounding the powerful and expanding prince-bishopric of Liège, or those territories coveted by the neighbouring Brabantine dukes (e.g. Loon, Limburg, etc.). For literary historians, these political developments can be crucial, as literature all too often travels along unexpected paths traced by family relations, diplomatic contacts and the like, or indeed in the footsteps of conquering armies.¹⁰

In discussing Arthurian literature, we have to turn our attention mostly to the Counties of Holland, Hainaut, Flanders, the Duchy of Brabant, and to the politically complex region of smaller and culturally interrelated domains in the region of the Rhine and Meuse rivers. These latter include the prince-bishopric of Liège, the territories of Loon, Limburg, Guelders, Gulik and the scattered smaller entities lying in between these bigger players.¹¹ While these regions were loyal either to the King of France or the German Emperor, it is fair to say that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they all enjoyed a relative degree of independence from their respective sovereign authorities.¹² For the regions protected by the Emperor, that is no surprise as the Holy Roman Empire did not have a tradition of enforcing imperial sovereignty in its vassal states. The empire was and, well into the nineteenth century, would continue to be a loose collection of semi-independent states loyal to one ruler only when it came to great military campaigns, the administration of justice and matters of religion. In France, however, authority worked altogether differently, with a king who actively sought to rule over the marginal parts of his kingdom. Though likewise governed through vassalage, it is fair to say that the sovereign enjoyed far greater authority – and was far more eager to enforce it – than in the Holy Roman Empire. Unlike in the Empire – at least theoretically speaking – kingship in France was also hereditary, which helped to strengthen claims to power (and family feuds) that spanned several generations. The complex relationship with the kingdom of France has had both positive and negative effects on the history of Flanders and that of the Low Countries. There were recurring conflicts between the regional and royal authorities, certainly when the County of Flanders developed into one of the most prosperous regions in the known world. At the same time, the cultural competition between the royal court and that of the Flemish counts and the dukes of Burgundy (or the courts of other vassals) has been the driving force behind some of the greatest achievements in the fields of art, literature and architecture, especially in the French-speaking medieval world, often employing artists from the Low Countries.

The latter aspect is important. Before going into the several regions in any detail, we should look at another border that has defined the Low Countries in cultural terms, and continues to do so to the present day: the linguistic border between French and Dutch/German, or more precisely, the border between the Romance and Germanic dialects. The linguistic border was, and still is, subject to change, having shifted over time to the north as well as to the south.¹³

Speaking in modern geographical terms, this border runs through Belgium from the shores of the North Sea in northern France, east all the way to the river Meuse, where it bends south to pass through Luxembourg into the border regions of present-day France and Germany. In historical terms, it divided the Low Countries into a large, northern Dutch-speaking part, and a smaller French-speaking part in the south. Of course, if we look at the language division from a socio-linguistic point of view rather than from a merely geographical one, the story becomes far more complex. During the course of the Middle Ages, French increasingly became the lingua franca of the high nobility, gaining importance in the leading courts of the Low Countries even in Dutch-speaking regions.¹⁴ Because the use of French and Dutch differed greatly among various regions and in different contexts, we will deal with this question in more detail below.

While less well-defined and less easily discernible, there is another linguistic border that ought to inform our understanding of the Low Countries: the more permeable transition area between the linguistic variants that would eventually develop into modern Dutch on the one hand and modern German on the other. In medieval times, the difference between both languages was less clear-cut and contemporary assessments of the situation are typically confusing. For quite some time now, scholars have thought of these linguistic variants in terms of a dialectal continuum.¹⁵ The easternmost dialect of the Low Countries, then, must have been difficult to understand for people living along the coast, but very easy for their neighbours to the east. This situation, while still sometimes occurring in present-day dialects, has gradually faded as standard varieties emerged, both in the Low Countries and in Germany, from the sixteenth century onwards.¹⁶

Sources indicate that contemporaries were well aware that they shared a common tongue but also noted the differences between regional variants. In medieval booklists, for example, some notaries have distinguished between Flemish and more eastern variants of Dutch (‘in flamingo’ versus ‘in theutonico’).¹⁷ In one notorious – and probably exaggerated – instance, a group of western Flemish Cistercians even asked the famous mystic John of Ruusbroec, who lived near Brussels in Brabant, for a Latin translation of one of his vernacular texts, because they purportedly could not understand his Brabantine dialect (Willaert 2010, 5–9). Likewise, Jacob van Maerlant, the so-called ‘godfather’ of Middle Dutch literature, provided a nice sample of the linguistic diversity of the multilingual setting in which he worked in h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages
• Contents
• Preface
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Guidelines for the Reader
• Introduction
• 1. The Cultural and Historical Context of the Low Countries
• 2. French Arthurian Literature in the Low Countries
• 3. The Manuscripts
• 4. King Arthur in the Historiography of the Low Countries
• 5. Translations and Adaptations of French Verse Romances: Tristant, Wrake van Ragisel, Ferguut, Perchevael, Torec
• 6. Indigenous Arthurian Romances: Walewein, Moriaen, Ridder metter mouwen, Walewein ende Keye, Lanceloet en het hert met de witte voet
• 7. Translations and Adaptations of French Prose Romances, Including the Lancelot Compilation
• 8. Arthurian Literature of the Rhineland
• 9. The Arthurian Legacy
• Illustration
• Notes
• General Bibliography